


The Tale of Two Yuris

by Thia (Jennaria)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Anal Sex, Anxiety, Dancing, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Magic, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 15:12:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11716959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennaria/pseuds/Thia
Summary: In which Viktor is a Faery King, Yuuri looks for happiness by following mysterious music, and Yuri wants to know why it's his responsibility to sort this shit out.





	1. Not What I Intended

Once upon a time, there were two boys both named Yuri. Despite their shared name, they bore little enough resemblance to each other. One was a man grown, with dark hair and golden-brown eyes, and a beauty (especially when he danced) that everyone except he himself could see from miles away. The other teetered on the boundary of boy and man, with pale hair and green eyes, and although he _could_ dance, if anyone called _him_ beautiful he would shout at them until they stopped. 

The boy Yuri grew up the foster brother of the man Yuri, and the two Yuris loved each other and shouted at each other as much as the man Yuri loved and was shouted at by his sister Mari. But eventually word came to the boy Yuri: "Your parents are dead, and your grandfather grows old and weak. It is time to return home."

At first the boy Yuri thought to return alone, but the family said, "No, our two Yuris will go together."

"I what?"" said the man Yuri.

"Well," said his sister, "after what happened at Obon --"

"Right, of course," the man Yuri said hastily, and that was that. When the day came, the two Yuris set off together. 

They walked, and they walked, and sometimes they said nothing and sometimes they spoke. As is the way on long journeys, sometimes they talked of small silly things, and sometimes they talked of deeper questions. The man Yuri did not ask after the boy Yuri's grandfather, and the boy Yuri did not ask what happened at Obon.

Eventually they approached the city where the grandfather lived, but with each step closer, the man Yuri grew quieter and quieter, and smiled less and less. The boy Yuri did not noticed at first, then did not want to notice. At last, he could no longer pretend, and burst out with, "What the fuck is your problem?"

The man Yuri jumped, just as his flints struck together, and the spark flew well out of the fire circle. The two spent the next few minutes frantically dumping earth on the inappropriate fire and trying not to get dirt all over everything else. 

Finally the fire was where it belonged, and their dinner cooking. That might, in an easier world, have been the end of it, but the boy Yuri never learned to let go. "You didn't answer me," he said gruffly. "What's your problem?"

"Nothing," the man Yuri said.

"Bullshit. You're here to help, not be a fucking idiot. You've gone all quiet like you're _worried_ again. If you're going to be useless, why did you even fucking come?"

The older Yuri didn't answer. Instead, he pressed his lips together and looked away from his brother's angry gaze.

"Fine! Fucking _be_ like that! See if I fucking try to --" the boy Yuri waved his hands and abandoned his sentence. He poked at the fire angrily, and checked the skewers of meat and mushroom angrily, and ate his half angrily (but still left the other half for his brother), and wrapped himself in blankets angrily. It took him a long time to fall asleep, but at last he did.

*

Some people are born with a whisper in their mind, like a malicious wind, telling them that at any moment, their fears will become reality. One kingdom blames these winds on witches, another on the fey, and a third holds it the fault of the parents of the afflicted, who must have done something awful to make their child suffer so. 

The man Yuri grew up with such a whisper. He could quiet it with drinking, or with dancing, or with his family - sometimes. Try though he might, he had not yet learned to silence it on his own. By that fire, far away from home, with his foster brother's careless words ringing in his ears, the whisper seemed very loud and very close.

He ate his meal, banked the fire, and sat staring into the embers for what seemed a long time. Then he rose to his feet. "Just for a walk," he said out loud. "Just to clear my head."

The boy Yuri remained still, wrapped in his blankets, breathing heavy and regular with sleep.

The man Yuri turned, and walked away.

Step by step, with whispers of poison in his ears - _fucking idiot_ \- and shadows twisted beneath his feet - _going to be useless_ \- Yuri's walk became a jog, and his jog became a run. His head did not clear, because no one can outrun their own mind, no matter how fast they go. At last one foot caught a low branch, and Yuri fell sprawling across the ground, the breath knocked out of him.

He lay there for a moment, bruised and tired and cold and tangled in grass and fading fear. A heavy mist swirled around him, hiding any familiar stars. Then he laughed, a sharp, silent huff. He'd proved his brother right, hadn't he? He'd let the words of an impatient boy touch him, and gone running off like exactly the fucking idiot he'd been called. He pushed himself to hands and knees, with the intention of returning to his foster brother - if he could find the way in the dark and the fog and the unknown land.

A chill breeze swirled around him, and he heard, not far distant, the sound of music. Dance music, almost but not quite familiar.

Yuri stood, and walked in the direction of the music. The fog swirled around him. Off in the distance, a light like a candle gleamed invitingly. Yuri glanced at it, then looked away. It was a different direction than the music, coming clearer with each step despite the fog, and if he had to pick a mysterious, possibly-magical lure, he preferred music over bobbing lights. 

He walked on, step by step. The whispers of his own fears had dulled, but so had everything else: his feet ached with cold until he could hardly feel the ground underneath them, the night and the fog left him half-blind, and something - perhaps the fog again - filled his nose so he couldn't even smell or taste properly. Only the music came clearly.

At last he stumbled over his numb feet, and fell to his knees again on the ground. Only it wasn't the dirt and grass he'd expected, that he'd thought he'd been walking on. It was smooth stone, polished as fine as glass, warm as a summer's evening to the touch.

Yuri sat back on his heels, and looked around. No fog, no wind. Instead, he knelt in what seemed to be the entryway of some fine house, with tall pillars and bright colored walls. He scrambled up, looking around for a door out. Either he'd hit his head when he fell earlier, and this was a dream, or else he'd stumbled into some place that he surely should not be.

"Hi!"

Yuri jumped. Another young man, dressed in fine brocades and with an official-looking sash draped across his chest, had appeared from the shadows where there must be a door into the rest of the house. "I - I'm sorry, sir," Yuri stammered, bowing politely. "I shouldn't have--"

"You should," the young man said with a grin. "At least, if you're a dancer. _Are_ you a dancer?"

"Ye-es?" Yuri's skin prickled with belated wariness. Where was he? What was going on?

"Oh, good!" the young man said, clapping his hands together. "We're always looking for new dancers. Tonight's the first of the great Autumn Dances, so His Majesty will be looking for a partner too - here, this way -"

To his own surprise, Yuri didn't move. He might be a fool, afraid of his own shadow, but he had danced for ghosts and kings before, and he had his pride. "Without even seeing me dance?" he said, and it came out a challenge.

The young man had extended one hand, as if to draw back the shadows like a curtain. He stayed there for a long, posed moment, studying Yuri. Then he smiled, showing teeth a little too sharp for a human mouth, and instead extended his other hand to Yuri. "If you insist," he said softly.

From a coldly objective point of view, it was not Yuri's best work. There was little space in the room, between the pillars, and the music that had drawn Yuri there had faded, leaving only the soft humming of his unexpected partner, when he remembered and wasn't looking down at his own feet, or up at Yuri with bright intense eyes. But Yuri had danced to silence and the memory of music before, in the tight space of his own room, and dream or not, he would not fail. At last, the young man dropped Yuri's hand, laughing, and bowed deeply to Yuri. "They call me Phichit," he said, still breathless from the laughter. "How shall I call you?"

"Yuri."

"Excellent! Now, wait a moment."

Phichit ducked into the shadows, and returned the promised moment later, carrying ink and a brush. He took Yuri's wrists and painted signs on Yuri's skin that Yuri could almost, but not quite, read, then knelt and repeated the signs on Yuri's ankles. He paused there, head tilted to one side as if considering something, then rose to his feet and drew something silvery from where it had been tucked in his sash. "One last thing," he said, and before Yuri could do more than blink, dropped the silver chain around Yuri's neck.

Yuri shivered in a second of intense cold. It faded quickly, and he looked down at himself to find that wrists and ankles and chain were all invisible, hidden behind clothing as fine as Phichit's, though of darker color.

"Here," Phichit said softly. "This way. Welcome to the Autumn Dance."

Yuri wasn't sure if they moved through a curtain, or if the room dissolved around them and re-formed into some new place. Either way, he found himself suddenly surrounded, and swept off into a new dance, as the music he had heard before surged up, clean and clear and loud.

It went on for what felt like hours, although Yuri never felt himself grow tired. He danced sometimes with a group, sometimes with a partner; with men, with women, with people whose gender he didn't know, with people who did not appear human at all. Every so often the music paused, and Yuri found a glass of clear liquid in his hand. He told himself it was water, and drank it. He'd made that choice back in the antechamber, dancing with Phichit.

In the middle of a dance, someone grabbed Yuri's butt. He stumbled, nearly colliding with his current partner. By the time he regained his feet, the partner in question had vanished into the crowd. Yuri turned around to protest at being grabbed - and found a man of about Yuri's age, smirking at Yuri through his close-trimmed goatee and mustache. He wore bright clothing, as close-fitted as his own skin, and he reached out and stroked Yuri's sleeve as if he had the right.

"Sir?" Yuri glanced at the man's hand, then back up at the man. Was _this_ the King who was looking for a partner?

"Phichit tells me you're a good dancer, so I came to try you out for myself," the man said, which neither explained who he was, nor why he hadn't just come and asked for a dance like a normal person. His hand slid up Yuri's arm.

Yuri did not stop to wonder why, or what the man intended. The dancing filled him with bubbling courage like strong wine. He clamped his other hand over the man's, pinning it in place. "If you would like to _dance_ here, sir, then you need only ask."

The man eyed him in silence, long enough for the old familiar whispers in Yuri's mind to wake again and shriek that he'd mis-stepped, that any moment now he would blink and find himself alone in a night-cold field, with no way home. But at last the man smiled, as wide and pointed as Phichit, and said, "Then I'm asking."

The press of bodies around them eased, and Yuri looked around to find himself, and his new dance partner, alone in a sudden clear space. The music played on, though it slowed to something sinuous and breathless. Yuri looked back at the man, raised his chin, and stepped forward.

This man was a better dancer than Phichit, and not merely in the sense that he has better music and more space. He knew how to lead Yuri through the steps, and how to follow when the music shifted and Yuri took control. Whenever he had the chance, he leaned into Yuri, as if the dance would translate into a seduction. But Yuri looked away, and braced his arms to keep the man at a distance.

The dance ended with the music, and they held position, hands around each other's waists. The man studied Yuri thoughtfully, and Yuri stared back, defiant. He could feel the panic trying to well up again, but it subsided quickly - the dance, the room, the night were all too unreal for fear to take proper hold.

At last the man smiled, and shook his head with a rueful chickle. "An excellent dance and an excellent dancer," he said, releasing Yuri at last. He bowed slightly. "They call me Chris. I would like to introduce you to another dancer, better than I. Will you come?"

He didn't touch Yuri, but Yuri still found himself following Chris across the room. He expected to lose him in the crowd as the music resumed its familiar pulse, but the crowd never quite seemed to re-materialize. Either Chris had a magical sense for openings, the dancers were deliberately leaving them room, or both.

At last Chris stopped short, and Yuri did too, peering around Chris to see this other dancer.

They stood in front of a throne, tall and black, with only its size and the man sitting in it to prove it a throne. But the man - oh, this man Yuri had seen before. He'd _danced_ with this man before. Last time, the man wasn't wearing a crown (now gleaming gold against his silver hair), and he wore different clothing (equally elegant), but he could not mistake the hair and the sky blue of his eyes and - though he only saw it once before - the smile on this man's lips as he looked up and saw them standing there.

"Your majesty!" Chris bowed, low and elaborate. "Allow me to introduce you to -"

"Yuri!"

Yuri opened his mouth to say _Your Majesty_ , and what came out, as he walked forward - oh, this _must_ be a dream - was, "Viktor."

Viktor took Yuri's hand and kissed them, one after another. He glanced over at Chris, then said, "Shall we dance?"

"Yes," Yuri said.

The music changed again - not to the self-conscious invitation that had accompanied the trial dance with Chris, but to something flowing and rippling like water. Viktor led Yuri away from the throne. The crowd of dancers had receded again, or perhaps vanished entirely - Yuri didn't know which, and didn't care, not in Viktor's arms. This wasn't a test. Viktor already knew Yuri could dance.

"You remember," Viktor murmured, hardly audible over the music.

"Yes," Yuri said again.

"I've been waiting."

He hadn't known. He hadn't been sure. But all Yuri said was, "I'm sorry."

Viktor swirled Yuri into a turn, and Yuri leaned into his arms. "You're here now," Viktor said, and smiled, voice deepening to something like a purr. "In my arms. At last."

He kissed Yuri. It felt _real_ \- not faint, or filtered, or dream-like, but sudden and vivid as red blood on winter snow. Yuri moaned despite himself.

Somewhere outside, a cock crowed, and everything went dark around them.

*

Miles and another world away, the boy Yuri rolled over and sat up. "What time is -"

He stopped. The fire had gone out, but he could see clearly enough in the faint light of dawn. Only one travel-pack sat near him, no sign of the second bed-roll that _should_ have still been spread out on the other side of the fire, with his foster-brother on it. Instead, brightly colored autumn leaves lay scattered across the campsite, as if a wind passed through.

Yuri blinked. Blinked again. Then said, "Well, _fuck_."


	2. Seeking Is Not Finding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Yuri the younger is maybe not as respectful of magic as he should be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN REVISED! Also I've put the second half of this chapter in its own chapter, as I realized it wasn't working to try to cram both Yuris into a single chapter every time, thus the change in chapter count.

Young Yuri marked the spot where he and his brother had camped with a bright red ribbon, tied around an iron spike he hammered into the ground. The leaves blew away before the iron had more than touched the ground. Yuri watched them go with grim satisfaction, before returning to his hammering. 

A half-day's walk brought him to the gates of the city where his grandfather lived. He had to ask his way once past the gates, but he sat down to lunch with his much-healthier-than-reported, and somewhat confused, grandfather. "I don't regret your coming," his grandfather explained, when Yuri told him why he'd traveled to the city. "I'm glad beyond all telling that you are here again. But I did not send for you."

"Then who - oh." Yuri thought of the obvious answer: the Fae that had stolen his foster-brother. He bit his tongue hard on the angry words he wanted to say, because he had not forgotten _all_ his manners, and after a moment, he said, "Grandfather, are there any magicians here?"

His grandfather knew a few magicians, but they were all hedge-witches and grass-wizards, good for small potions and uncomplicated spells, but not for facing down an unknown Fae tricky enough to lure the older Yuri away. Grandfather asked this person and that, with no useful answers, while Yuri bit his tongue harder until he nearly bit it off. Finally the oldest of the hedge-witches told them: "It's no use asking us. Go talk to Jean the Magnificent."

"Jean the what the fuck?" Yuri said

"The Magnificent. Go down this road and you'll see his house: it's all made of gold."

The last word had hardly left the old woman's lips before Yuri said farewell to his grandfather and ran off to this great magician. To Yuri's astonishment, he had been told true: the walls of the house of Jean the Magnificent was made of gold, with windows of silver and roof of bronze. When he knocked at the door, he expected a spirit to answer. 

Instead, a pretty girl with black hair, braided back to show human ears, and a skirt short enough to show human legs, opened the door and asked his business.

"To see Jean the Magnificent," Yuri said impatiently.

"Anyone can see Jean the Magnificent," the girl said, with a toss of her head. "He walks to the market and back every morning." And she closed the door.

Yuri knocked again, louder than before, and when the girl opened again, said, "Don't be a fucking idiot, I'm here to hire him."

"You're not very polite," the girl said, and tried to close the door again.

Yuri kicked the door back open, knocking door and girl back into the room, and stomped in. "My _brother_ has been _kidnapped_ by the _Fae_ , bitch, I'll be _polite_ when you get him back!"

The girl sat on the floor and rubbed her shoulder, frowning up at him. Before she could say anything, an inside door opened and Jean the Magnificent, dressed all in gold like his house, came in "Welcome! Welcome to my house!" He stopped short, and stared down at the girl, head tilted. "Isabella? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she said, sweet and gentle and looking at Jean as if he were the only man in the world. "The little boy didn't want to take a 'no.'"

"Fuck you, I'm not a _kid_ , and my brother's been fucking _kidnapped_ , I can't just wait around until you feel like letting me in!"

Isabella pushed herself to her feet without even looking at Yuri, as if he didn't exist, but Jean the Magnificent's face lit up as if Yuri had offered him a gift of fine jewels, rather than knocking his servant to the ground. "Kidnapped? By who? No, no, where are my manners - come in! Have tea! Tell me everything!" 

Yuri tried to object, but protest though he would, he found himself a few short minutes later sitting down on a couch of gold (of course), holding a crystal cup of tea. Jean sat opposite him, glittering in his gold clothing against a couch of deep blue, and talked about how many people he had saved from kidnapping before. Isabella set out more tea and fine little sugar-cakes and apples sliced up like crowns, smiling as if she never frowned before. As soon as Isabella left the room, Jean set down his cup. "Now, then! Tell me about your brother!"

So Yuri told him: about the summons that wasn't actually from his grandfather, and the long journey, and how he woke up that morning to find his foster-brother gone and only autumn leaves left, which scattered at the touch of cold iron to the ground. Jean listened to it all, then asked, "But why take your brother - I'm sorry, his name was Yuri too? That must have been confusing."

Yuri opened his mouth to yell, then shut it again. He'd already tried yelling at Jean, and it didn't work. "I think they took him because something happened this last Obon -- it's a local festival in late summer, one of those nights when it's easy to cross. My brother's a...I don't know what you'd call it. He goes and does something at the temple so the Fae are distracted and don't bother regular people. Only this past year, something went wrong, so he came with me."

"So your foster parents sent him away to keep him safe from the Fae, and still the Fae found him. Mmm." Jean pondered for a moment, then straightened up, slamming his fist on the table so the crystal cups jumped. "I shall go with you and find your brother! One moment, I must pack, and so must you! I shall meet you at the front gates!"

Yuri stared, but only for a second. He hadn't expected it to be this easy, not after the girl at the front door. "Sure, whatever, I'll be there soon," he said, and left.

Yuri had not yet unpacked his bag from the journey there, so repacking was as easy as allowing his grandfather to insist that he trade clean shirts for dirty. His grandfather's shirts looked big, but Yuri brought a belt, and by the time the sun had half sunk to the horizon again, he sat by the gates waiting for Jean The Magnificent.

Jean the Magnificent arrived with a fanfare of trumpets, and the girl from the door fluttering around him to kiss him farewell, so everyone stared and cheered. Yuri bit his tongue on the taunts he wanted to throw. Gilded though the man might seem, Yuri still needed his help.

They walked through the gates to the sound of cheering, and began the half-day's walk to the place where the other Yuri vanished. At first, they walked in silence, to young Yuri's surprise: he had expected more chattering and boasting. At first Yuri welcomed the quiet, but as the shadows grew longer, he found himself tripping over his own thoughts. Finally, Yuri broke. "Thanks."

Jean tilted his head, and did not look away from the road ahead of them.

"For coming out immediately," Yuri said, "instead of waiting for the morning. I thought - never mind."

He looked over to find Jean smiling at him - not the proud, glittering smile of before, but a gentler smile that reminded him oddly of the other Yuri. "Have you studied magic at all, young Yuri?"

"Just temple lessons."

"My teacher taught me that the Fae are strongest at dawn, at dusk, at the mid-point of the night and the mid-point of the day. Since the camp is a half-day's journey from our city -"

"Leaving in the morning means getting there at mid-day," Yuri said, and sighed at himself for not understanding earlier. "But leaving now means staying out overnight, and getting there mid-morning, probably."

"Exactly! If you'd been trained, you might have been almost as good at me. Why, I remember when I was your age…"

For the next few hours, Yuri heard more than he ever wanted about magical theory (boring), the Fae (terrifying), and all the wonderful deeds that Jean had done to earn himself the title 'the Magnificent' (even more boring than magical theory). Jean stopped only just before sunset, when he stepped off the worth path, gestured at the flat ground next to it, and declared, "We camp here!" Yuri didn't mind the stopping. He did mind Jean shouting, "Wait! Stop!" and leaving Yuri to stand there awkwardly while Jean set out, stone by stone, a dully gleaming circle around the entire campsite.

"Protection," Jean said, smiling that 'the Magnificent' smile again, and wouldn't say anything else no matter what Yuri asked.

Yuri went to sleep half-determined to go straight back to the city and find another magician, no matter what the hedge-witch said. He woke in the dead of night to the sound of heavy breathing next to him. A man he'd never seen before, dressed in rags, knelt next to him, and the moonlight caught on the knife in his hand, too close to Yuri's neck.

Before Yuri could say anything, Jean sat up and said, "Who's there?"

The ragged man didn't answer, though his breath caught and then sped up.

"Ah," Jean said, as if he expected the silence, then, "Go away, and know better than to anger Jean the Magnificent!"

The man lurched to his feet, and stumbled off toward the road. Yuri sat up too, carefully, half-expecting the man to turn around any second. But he did not.

"A bandit," Jean said, when Yuri looked back at him. He shook his head, and tch'd his tongue like a housewife. "I knew they were in the area, but not this close to the walls. I'll tell the city guard when we return." He lay back down again and rolled himself up in his blankets, and within a few minutes started snoring.

Yuri lay awake far longer. When he rose the next morning, he found Jean already up and calmly toasting bread over the fire. Yuri opened his mouth to say _thank you_ , or even _that was amazing last night_ , but the words wouldn't come. Instead, he said, "Any extra bread?"

They set out again in good time, and Jean spent the remaining miles proclaiming about magical theory some more. If his hands shook or his voice wavered, Yuri did not know him well enough to see. 

They reached the iron spike with its red ribbon by the expected mid-morning. First Jean examined the campsite on his hands and knees, like a craftsman who'd dropped his tool. Then he asked Yuri to pull up the iron spike, and brought out the leather pouch of small gleaming stones he'd used the previous night. Yuri took a couple of steps back, spike clenched in his hand.

Jean arranged the stones into their circle, with Yuri and his iron on the outside. Then Jean knelt down in the middle and pulled out a shallow bowl of gleaming silver, along with an equally small bottle of blown glass. He poured the bottle into the bowl - something black and glistening, not wine or water - and set the bowl down in front of his knees. He raised his hands, and chanted in a language Yuri didn't know. 

After a minute of chanting, Yuri felt a breeze, bitter cold, and thought he could hear distant music. Then, from somewhere - perhaps the bowl, perhaps the air itself - came a clear, young voice. "Who calls?"

"I call," Jean said, deeper than usual. 

The breeze swirled around them, and the voice said, "Why have you called?"

"You have taken this man's brother," Jean said, voice loud and stern, and pointed at Yuri. 

A moment of quiet, and Yuri started to think it really might be as simple as that. Then the voice laughed, high and rippling and cruel. "What of it?"

Jean blinked, at Yuri and then at his bowl. "You, you...you must bring him back!"

"There is no bond to force us," the voice said. "Not with you, not with his brother. You don't even know why Yuri came to us. We don't have to answer anything from you, Jean who thinks he's so magnificent."

Jean's eyes widened, and he held out his hands, pleading. "Wait --"

Only a faint 'pop' answered him, like a bubble bursting. Then the breeze abruptly vanished, leaving Jean staring down into an empty bowl.


	3. Why Am I Here?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Yuri absolutely knows better, and doesn't let that stop him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this looks familiar, the original version of it was posted as the second half of Chapter 2. I've revised both halves and split it, so if you're here via update notification, it might be worth going back and re-reading Chapter 2, for more reasons than just 'it's been four months since I posted it and you've probably forgotten what's going on'.

Let us leave one Yuri, furious and frightened, and switch to the other, just waking up. He had drifted for some time in that pleasant nothingness of warm blankets and cool air and smooth sheets, but finally he roused enough to remember he should be on a bedroll on the ground, not on a comfortable mattress in an unknown room. He sat up slowly and looked around.

He found himself in a room both elegant and strange. None of the simple beauty of home: this place was all marble and silk brocade, tall windows open to a sunlit garden full of flowers, everything bright and beautiful and terrifying in its unfamiliarity. As he looked, a cabinet across the room opened its doors, and clothing floated out of it to drape across a chaise by the windows. A soft breeze blew in, fluttering the long curtains and the clothing alike.

Yuri remembered everything now - the running, the dancing. Phichit. Chris.

Viktor.

As the name formed in his mind, the inside door swung open. Yuri sat up to see who it was, half-expecting goblin servants, half-expecting Viktor to have heard his thoughts and appeared in answer. He found neither. Instead, Phichit - dressed again in reds and golds, though far less formally than the night before - came in and shut the door behind him. "Need any help getting dressed?"

Yuri had not done more than glance at the clothing, and couldn't have said whether it looked familiar in style or not. Before he might say either yes or no, he found himself out of bed, stripped of his old clothing, and bundled into the bath. Yuri struggled only until he felt the startlingly warm water, an unexpected luxury at this time of year. Then he subsided and allowed Phichit to help him bathe and dress, and once more carefully loop the necklace Phichit had given him around his neck. Lastly, Phichit produced a brush from somewhere, and carefully repainted last night's symbols on Yuri's wrists and ankles.

"Now, then!" Phichit said, rocking back on his heels and smiling at Yuri like an artist at her painting. "Where would you like to go?"

Yuri looked out the window at the garden with its impossible flowers. "I'm not even sure where I am," he said.

"In the Other World," Phichit said promptly, then laughed at whatever expression must have crossed Yuri's face. "Well, you _are_ , and you'd be surprised how many humans don't seem to realize, even when they had to win their way in!"

All the stories Yuri ever heard about the Fae and how humans dealt in their lands rose up to tremble in his throat. He swallowed them back, and said only, "I knew."

Phichit waited, as if expected Yuri to say something else. When he didn't, Phichit rose to his feet and said cheerfully, "Well! You're in the house of the King of the Spirits, who's ruled all the Fae since moonlight first gleamed. He put you in the chambers of the king's favorite, so I hope you're not planning to leave!"

He smiled as he said it, that too-sharp grin that reminded Yuri (as if he'd forgotten) who here was mortal and who was not. So Yuri answered, "If I did, wouldn't years have passed?"

"Not during the Autumn Dances," Phichit protested. "Mortal time and our time never match _exactly_ , but there's too many comings and goings to let the connection drift _that_ much."

"Ah," Yuri said faintly, then, "Wait, the _king's favorite_? I can't - what about -"

Phichit caught Yuri's arm before he could rush from the room. "The king hasn't had a favorite these many years," he said, gentle in Yuri's ear. "These rooms were prepared for _you_ , ever since our king came back from his summer journeys speaking of the man who could dance to equal him."

A distant terror rose up in Yuri, only to be cut off by a different, more familiar fear as Phichit guided him out into the hall and down toward the garden. "Where are you taking me?"

"His Highness told me to send you to His Majesty once you were dressed," Phichit said.

"But he's a _king_ , surely he has things to do that aren't…" _That aren't me,_ he wants to say, but that sounds more like a sly joke than a choking anxiety. 

"I'm sure he'd love to see you!" Phichit sang, as he led Yuri out into the garden. "Now, then - at this hour, his schedule has him in the Green Hall, just down that way to your left. If you get lost, follow the shouting."

Yuri peered down the path, paved with silvery-pale rock and edged with deep blue and purple flowers. When he turned back again, Phichit had vanished.

Yuri hesitated there in the garden for what felt like a long time. He knew what he _should_ do. He should run, hide, leave while he still could. He'd left behind his family and abandoned his foster-brother. He must not stay.

But it would do no harm to linger a _little_ while, would it? The Autumn Dances had just begun. He could stay, drink deeply of this time with Viktor, and _then_ go back to duty and family.

(Viktor had been looking for him, Phichit had implied. Viktor remembered him. Viktor wanted him.) 

From somewhere beyond the far end of the garden path, Yuri heard a shout. He hesitated only a moment before following.

The path led to an archway, which opened into a room - at least, Yuri assumed it did, as a small crowd of elongated people in starched, fan-like clothing almost blocked the entrance. Yuri sidled past behind them, murmuring polite apologies, until he could see into the cordoned-off center of the room, where Viktor and Chris danced.

Not a dance the way Yuri did it, even last night, although both King and Prince moved with dancer's grace. More like a warrior's spar, or a nobleman's duel, with blades of glass in one hand and magic shimmering in the other. Yuri watched, his heart in his mouth. He could see the skill in their movements - the graceful curve as Viktor dodged the fire blazing from Chris's hand, the strength as Viktor lunged forward with dagger-sharp shards of ice. Only the wide smile on Chris's face, and the smaller one on Viktor's, kept Yuri something like calm.

At last a deep, gruff voice called, "Enough!" Viktor and Chris immediately stepped back, and bowed to each other. Without looking, Chris reached out and caught the white cloth that someone had tossed him, and bowed more deeply to the crowd of watchers, gesturing with his free hand extravagantly,

Viktor laughed as he caught his own cloth, and nodded to the crowd. "I cry your pardon for the delay, gentles." Yuri could hear a faint echo of those words in another language: more magic, translating in his ear, even keeping the cool formality of Viktor's tone. "My heir and I set aside this hour for practice, against even the most urgent interruptions."

"Begs _our_ pardon?" the tall, washed-out fae standing next to Yuri muttered incredulously, with that same faint echo.

Someone else, nearer the center of the crowd cleared their throat and said, with an accent that reminded Yuri of the language he had almost heard, "It is we who should apologize, your Majesty! We come from the northern mountains to discuss, ah, a few matters with your Majesty, but it was hardly - that is, it should be easily resolved at the hands of leaders so, mm, _resolute_ as yourself and your heir."

"I appreciate your grace," Viktor said, his voice still cold and distant. "We shall speak again this afternoon." And as if that were an official dismissal - which perhaps it was, for all Yuri knew - the crowd thinned and vanished through a different door Yuri hadn't noticed, leaving Yuri alone and stranded against the wall, not anywhere near the archway and not able to slip out without being obvious. He froze.

As the door closed behind the other Fae, Chris chuckled. "They must never have been to court before. Did they really think you'd be too distracted by the Dances to be dangerous?"

"Of course they did," Viktor said, muffled behind the cloth as he wiped his face. "Which is why you told Aelfred to let them in before our practice was over." He tossed the cloth aside, the glass blade vanishing along with it, and laughed shortly. "Oh, that look - I'm hardly blind, Chris."

"Which is why I'm still heir and not King," Chris said. "Even if you _are_ distracted. Speaking of which, hello there!"

Viktor turned around, and the small smile, lingering from before, widened into something more real. Yuri blushed, half at Viktor's smile, half at Chris's smirk, but said, "Phichit said to come immediately. I'm sorry if I intrude --"

"You didn't," Viktor assured him. "Less than the Alfar." A wave of the hand indicated the people who just left.

"If anyone's intruding, I am," Chris said cheerfully. "Later!"

He left, or perhaps vanished - Yuri wasn't paying attention, not with Viktor there, blue eyes intent on Yuri. Yuri opened his mouth to say something - to praise the Dance last night, to ask how long Viktor intended to keep him, to see if Phichit was right about why Yuri was here. What came out was a quiet, "How long has Chris been your heir?"

"Too long," Viktor said, which should have been a joke but came out a confession, subdued and intimate. He took a step toward Yuri.

Yuri leaned back against the wall, keeping his eyes fixed on Viktor's. "How long have you been king?" _Since moonlight_ , Phichit had said.

"Even longer," Viktor sighed, just above a whisper.

_The king hasn't had a favorite for a long time,_ Phichit had said. Yuri tried to swallow down an illogical pang of jealousy - Viktor had no reason to wait for a mere mortal who hadn't even been born when Viktor took the throne. "How many humans have danced with you?"

"I don't remember." Viktor didn't look away. Instead, he brushed Yuri's hair back from his face, his fingers gentle.

"Will I be forgotten, too?"

"No," Viktor said, hard and immediate.

"...promise?"

He shouldn't ask for that. He should ask Viktor to let him go, the sooner the better. But as the word passed his lips, wavering and pleading, Yuri let go of 'should.'. 

Viktor smiled, eyes somehow soft instead of angry, and leaned forward to kiss him again. 

Yuri leaned into the kiss, trembling and angry at himself for giving in so quickly. As if he sensed that, Viktor broke the kiss and stepped back and tilted his head to one side, studying him again. "Come with me."

"To where?" To the next thing on a king's busy schedule? To the favorite's rooms? So long as it could be some place private where they could kiss again, Yuri couldn't bring himself to care.

"To some place where we won't be interrupted," Viktor said with a frown, which melted into a more rueful expression. "Which means the favorite's rooms - the place you woke up."

Yuri breathed through the swelling warmth inside his chest. "I - you must have more important things - "

"Nothing that Chris can't take care of in my place," Viktor said, with a dismissive flip of his hand, then more quietly, "Nothing more important than you, my Yuri."

Yuri's fears whispered that Viktor had told other people that before, surely, the words so exactly what Yuri wanted to hear. He still took Viktor's hand and followed him back through the courtyard.

Once they reached the relative privacy of the suite, Yuri expected Viktor to kiss him again. Instead, Viktor guided him to the chaise by the open windows, and sat down at the other end, and said, "Tell me about your family."

"My what?" Yuri said.

"Your family," Viktor said patiently "I already know you have a sister, and that you dance amazingly, but little else. Or tell me what you do when you aren't dancing, or whether you've had any lovers. Tell me anything." He squeezed Yuri's hand, his fingers warm against Yuri's skin. "How am I to keep your attention if I hardly know you?"

"I see," Yuri said. He looked down at their joined hands, and cautiously squeezed back. "Only if you tell me about yourself as well."

They talked, for what felt like a long time - about Mari and dancing and the oceans by his home and young Yuri, silly small stories that could slip their way past the the fear clogging his throat whenever he thought he was talking, not just to Viktor, but to the King of all the Fae. Viktor repaid each story with a story of his own, a smile that looked less and less formal and false and more and more true, and with a caress of his thumb against Yuri's hand, or a shift of his body a finger's-width closer to where Yuri sat.

_This isn't about love,_ Yuri told himself. _This is only about this time, this moment._ He leaned forward, and kissed Viktor in the middle of one of his stories.

At first it was awkward, more awkward than Yuri had expected for it not being their first kiss - they bumped noses, and Yuri accidentally bit Viktor's lip, and Yuri couldn't seem to stop _thinking_ about what he should be doing. Viktor huffed something like a laugh against Yuri's cheek, and said, "Let me?"

"I'd better," Yuri muttered, and won a real laugh before Viktor gently pressed him back against the arm of the chaise and kissed him again.

And again. And again. Long, luxurious, decadent, shameless kisses that reduced Yuri's worries to nothing more than the wind through leaves. Yuri moaned into Viktor's mouth, trying to ask for more, and Viktor gave it to him. The feel of his fingers on Yuri's clothing, then Yuri's skin, blended into the warm liquid feeling that seemed to eddy through him. Occasionally Yuri tried to reach out, to touch Viktor, but every time Viktor took his hand, and kissed his wrist where Phichit's paint still stood vivid. "Not yet. Let me, this time."

At last Viktor sat back, breaking the last in an endless series of kisses. Yuri blinked his eyes open, not sure when they closed, and looked down at himself. He sprawled across the chaise, all his clothes pulled loose and spread beneath him so he looked twice as naked, chest bare, cock pulled free. Viktor knelt between his legs, one hand on Yuri's thigh, too close and not close enough to Yuri's erection. Viktor met Yuri's gaze, then leaned down and kissed Yuri's bare cock. "May I?"

Yuri swallowed, and said, "Yes."

He couldn't close his eyes now if he wanted to: the awareness of _who_ was between his legs burned through Yuri more than the physical. Viktor lingered over the act, drawing each sensation out like fine silk. Yuri tried to warn him when orgasm approached, but Viktor's hands only tightened on his hips so Yuri couldn't pull back if he tried. Yuri lay there, trembling, and watched as Viktor sat back up and licked his lips, smug as a cat with cream.

Yuri laughed despite himself. Viktor only smiled more widely and crawled up the chaise to sprawl half on top of Yuri. He was still hard - Yuri could feel him, pressing against Yuri's hip - but Viktor seemed more interested in kissing him again, first gentle, then when Yuri shamelessly opened his mouth, more deeply.

At last Yuri said, half-muffled against Viktor's mouth, "What about you?"

"What about me?" Viktor said, and nuzzled Yuri's cheek. "I have hands."

This couldn't last, Yuri told himself. He shouldn't give in more than he already had. He should keep himself locked away so he still had something left when he returned, as he must, to the human world. 

Instead he looked into Viktor's warm blue eyes and said softly, "I have a mouth."

Viktor swallowed hard, and hesitated, long enough for Yuri to see the way his eyes darkened. Yuri took courage and kissed Viktor again, before pushing him away, just enough. "May I?"

"Yes," Viktor whispered.

Yuri wasn't very experienced - for a variety of reasons - and for the first time it occurred to him to regret this. Viktor seemed to enjoy it anyway, telling him what to do when he hesitated, and groaning extravagantly when Yuri did something right. 

All too soon, Yuri found himself moaning, too, against Viktor's skin. His jaw ached, his throat twinged, and he came himself five minutes ago, but taste and smell, the feel of Viktor trembling, the sound of him saying Yuri's name, left Yuri's head spinning more than strong drink. When Viktor tensed under his hands and repeated Yuri's name in warning, Yuri refused to pull away any more than Viktor had.

Afterwards, he rested his head against Viktor's thigh. He could feel himself shaking with some inner quake. He should get up. He should get dressed again. He had meant to give way only a little, to have something to remember when he left. Now he wasn't sure he could leave at all.

"Come to bed, Yuri," Viktor murmured.

Yuri got up, and followed him to bed. The trembling had only gotten worse. But Viktor took his hand, and murmured to him, in a language Yuri didn't know. Occasionally he recognized what sounded like his name. He closed his eyes, and drifted back off to sleep.


	4. This Is How It Should Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Yuri tries again with a different magician.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more new chapter (this one genuinely new) to apologize for the long hiatus! I'll try to get back to a /slightly/ more frequent posting schedule for the last two chapters.

"What the _fuck_ just happened?!"

"I...I don't…" Jean shook his head, and looked around in child-like confusion. "They can't...the stones, it's never failed before."

"It failed this time," Yuri said, but less angrily. It's much easier to yell at people who yell back.

"It can't," Jean said, which explained nothing. He still knelt at the center of the circle, or what used to be a circle before the stones vanished with the breeze and the ink. After a moment of silence, he crawled over, and scratched at the dirt, as that would bring the stones back.

It took a long time for them to leave. Jean refused to give up on retrieving his stones, or opening a portal, or doing _something_ useful, long past the point where the most uncharitable observer (such as Yuri) would have told him to give up. By the time they left, Jean's face had reddened with sunburn and paled with exertion. Yuri was the one who remembered to sling Jean's bag over Yuri's own shoulder. He tucked away the iron spike with its useless red ribbon into Jean's bag, and didn't look back over his shoulder.

As they walked, Yuri watched any fellow-travelers warily. In case of any more bandits, Jean wouldn't be able to command them away the way he had that one man last night. They reached the city in late, _late_ afternoon, almost twilight. Glancing warily over his shoulder - though how he'd keep off either bandits or Fae, Yuri didn't know - Yuri steered Jean to that damn golden house, handed him and his bags off to the black-haired girl, told her he'd be back in the morning, and ran like a coward to his grandfather's house

Come morning, Yuri reluctantly returned to Jean's house. He didn't even _like_ the guy, but that didn't stop him feeling responsible for whatever the fuck had gone totally, utterly wrong. Maybe _he_ hadn't said the right things. When Yuri knocked, the girl Isabelle let him in without even yelling at him - which felt somehow worse than if she had - and took him upstairs to Jean's bedroom.

Jean was propped up in his bed, eating soup, when Yuri walked in. He set down his spoon immediately. "I'm sorry," he said, bowing - awkwardly, because of the tray in front of him and the pillows behind him.

"Yeah, well," Yuri said. "If that voice wasn't lying, it's half my fault. I'm sorry too." He could hardly look at Jean's face: the painfully bright red of sunburn and sickly gray pallor of power-drain had only gotten worse overnight.

Jean waved one hand, as if dismissing Yuri's awkward return apology. "There's more than one kind of being taken by the Fae," he said. "Most of them are by chance - a human who stumbled across the Fae, the wrong place at the wrong time." He paused, and took another spoonful of soup. "Sometimes, though, a specific Fae will take a liking to a specific human. The only ways to bring that human back are either to wait at the place where the human vanished, until the Fae tires of their, uh…" Jean hesitated as if trying to pick the right word, then shook his head and plowed on, "--or to kidnap the human back, usually with the help of a powerful magician."

"Don't say it like that!" Isabella said, from the doorway. Yuri hadn't realized she was even still there. "You're amazingly powerful!"

"Not enough," Jean said to her, then to Yuri, "I _am_ sorry. You told me your family sent your brother with you because of Obon, and I still thought he must have stumbled into Fae. I didn't go looking."

"...for?" Yuri tried to imagine a _more_ elaborate ritual than the circle of stones and bowl of ink. 

"The information you didn't know," Jean said. "What happened at Obon. Who, exactly, took him."

"Fuck."

Jean took a deep breath, as if to explain more. It turned into a hacking cough. Yuri flinched back. This wasn't just sunburn and power drain. What did the Fae _do_?

"You're cursed," Isabella said, sharp and short, from just behind Yuri. "Jean, you should rest --"

"One more minute," Jean said hoarsely to Isabella. "Yuri - you need a specialist. Go to the black house by the graveyard, and ask for Altin. He'll be able to help you better than I can."

"Especially now," Isabella muttered.

Finding Altin wasn't as easy as finding Jean had been: a black house doesn't shine like a golden house, and anyway the city had more than one graveyard. Yuri's grandfather warned him that any search that left a powerful wizard like Jean cursed was surely a search that no good sensible person would make. But he asked his friends again, and a middle-aged grass-wizard told Yuri where to find the black house, with its silvery gray roof and door, and not a sign else to mark that here lived a specialist in magic.

Yuri walked up to that silvery door just a little before sunset. He hesitated only a second before knocking.

He expected another girl to answer, or perhaps an older man like his grandfather. Instead the door swung open to reveal a man only a little older than Yuri, with dark hair and a pale face blank as a mask.

"Are you Altin?"

The man stepped back, which might have meant either yes or no. Yuri followed him in regardless, and found himself in a room as plain as his grandfather's house - wooden chairs, wooden table, stone tile underfoot, all dark colors with no bright paint or embroidered hangings. To Yuri, it felt like stepping into a shadowed cave after being out in the eye-stabbing brightness of summer.

Maybe-Altin pulled out a chair for Yuri, then sat down himself. "How can I help you?"

Yuri sat down and told him.

It poured out of him - first the straightforward story he'd told Jean, with the false summons and the journey and how his brother vanished in the night; then what little he knew about what happened on Obon, and why the other Yuri had come with him in the first place. He hesitated before beginning on what happened with Jean. Altin studied him, head slightly tilted, then held up a finger as if to say, _wait_. He got up and vanished through a door Yuri hadn't noticed, into another room. Yuri stared after him blankly, until Altin leaned back in through the door, and waved one hand as if to say, _go on_.

Yuri took a deep breath, and continued. He told the silence about finding Jean, and the stupid golden house with its stupid silver door and stupid bronze roof, and about Jean boasting, and about them leaving, and about Jean and the bandit and Jean maybe being right about how good he was. 

By this point, his voice was getting rough and his throat sore. Yuri coughed, hesitated, realized he was hesitating, and grimaced. Before he could ask for a glass of water, he heard the familiar whistle of a kettle, and belatedly realized what Altin was doing. Sure enough, Altin appeared again, with a teapot still steaming in one hand, and two comfortably large mugs already full of what smelled of spiced tea in the other. A second trip brought out a plate of small round biscuits with a dish of butter and a small knife. 

Yuri took the mug offered without hesitating, and sipped the hot tea. Just a little too hot to drink down the way he wanted, but it eased his throat so he could finish. So he did - describing exactly what the voice said and exactly what Jean had done, because this was the guy Jean sent him to, so he probably knew what the fuck went wrong better than Yuri did.

When Yuri finished, they both quietly drank their tea for a few minutes. Finally Altin set down his mug and said, "I trained with Jean when we were both young. He's frequently a fool, but he's nearly as powerful as he thinks he is."

Yuri muttered a curse into his tea.

"I can't promise to get your brother back, not on my own." Altin looked up, and met Yuri's gaze without flinching. "But I _can_ find out exactly why he was taken, and exactly who among the Fae took him."

"Good," Yuri said, and winced, because the word still came out harsh and rasping. He forced himself onward anyway. "What else do you need from me? Money?"

"Only if I succeed," Altin said. "Otherwise...your company, if you are willing to share it. The Fae was right: you need a bond."

"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

Altin winced in his turn, from something Yuri didn't understand. "Jean told you I was a specialist. That's true. I specialize in the kind of spell you saw Jean attempt. I speak to the dead, the Fae, to -"

"You're a _necromancer_?"

Altin sat up, tall and straight in the shadows of the room. "Yes."

"That is _so cool_!"

Altin blinked at Yuri, then slowly and awkwardly smiled. "My name is Otabek," he said. "If you'd call me that, I'd like it."

Unfortunately, according to Altin - wait, no, _Otabek_ \- he couldn't do the ritual immediately. Unless they went to the right kind of place (of which the closest was several miles away, nowhere near the campsite where Yuri lost his foster-brother), or unless you pissed them off the way Jean had, a necromancer had to wait for the right phase of the moon to speak to the Fae, which in this case meant the new moon, two days from now. Otabek said this as if he expected Yuri to leave and not return until the day of the new moon.

"I have to go home _now_ ," Yuri corrected him. "Doesn't mean I can't come back before then."

He returned home, and told his grandfather the good news over dinner. His grandfather mmm'd and ah'd and agreed when Yuri said that he intended to go back tomorrow.

He spent the entire next day at the house by the graveyard. He'd intended to just stop in, say hi, then go find a church or a monastery or some place where he could research the local Fae. Instead, Yuri found himself drinking more tea, and talking with Otabek. Not even about his brother - this wasn't Otabek doing research. They talked about growing up, what fostering had been like versus having four younger sisters, what Yuri remembered of his parents and why Otabek had left his behind in another country. They talked about the temple training Yuri had only just started, and how necromancy involved a lot less raising the dead and a lot more cleaning up dead people so they _wouldn't_ rise up.

"What, like, with water?"

"What else would I use?"

Yuri thought about it for a moment. It wasn't like the stories talked about this kind of thing. "I dunno. Oil?"

Otabek laughed, and Yuri grinned back at him. This was fucking amazing. He hadn't expected whatever the fuck this was to go - well, to go like _this_.

The second day, he came over mid-afternoon. This time they did talk about his brother, and Yuri found out he remembered things he hadn't thought he'd even noticed - not just the annoying shit like the way he could panic over fucking nothing, or the impressive things like his dancing, but little things, like the fact that every morning after he'd danced for the temple, he always made himself a bowl of pork and rice which smelled _amazing_ , and he'd eat it all without sharing. Yuri himself started learning temple-style dancing out of a childish desire for that pork and rice. Yuri didn't notice the time passing - again - until Otabek stood up. 

"Is it time?"

"Almost. It takes a while to set up the ritual."

Otabek wasn't kidding. Most of the set-up Yuri recognized from Jean's failed attempt, except Otabek didn't settle for a not-exactly-flat field. Instead, in back of the house, Yuri found what looked sorta like a garden of stone. Otabek paced around, arranging what Yuri assumed were magical stones into their place, and putting a small dish of ink in the center of the circle. He knelt down next to the dish, drew a knife from somewhere, then paused. "You are no blood relation to the other Yuri, yes?"

"Nope," Yuri said.

"And you have nothing marked with the blood of any relation of his?"

"No," Yuri said, more reluctantly. 

Otabek nodded, and pricked his own finger with the tip of his knife. Three drops into the ink, then he put away the knife somewhere and picked up the ink, swirling it around to mix the blood in. The bloody finger he put into his mouth unselfconsciously, just long enough to lick off the blood. 

After a moment, he put down the ink, and gestured to Yuri to kneel down opposite him. "Be sure you're comfortable. This may take a long time."

It didn't seem all that long before that same cold wind blew around them, and a similar child-like voice said, "Hello?"

"Hello, and well-met," Otabek said.

"Altin! Oh, good! The last ritual was _Jean_."

"Are you playing favorites, Leo?" Otabek said mildly.

"He was showing off!" the voice - Leo? - protested. "We didn't _mean_ to hit him that hard, but there was iron."

Yuri winced. Otabek glanced up at him with a flicker of eyes, then said, "He sent his client to me."

"Yuri's brother?" The cold seemed to dip and swirl, closer to Yuri somehow, until he found himself shivering like there wasn't anything between him and the chill. He clenched his teeth so they wouldn't chatter. Just when the cold became an actual physical ache in his bones, the breeze eddied away, and the child-like voice said sulkily, "You don't look anything like him."

Yuri looked up at Otabek, hope sudden and sharp inside him. He'd known it - he'd _known_ , that was why he'd driven in the iron - but he hadn't had more than a hint of proof. Even this didn't make it sure, but it was more than he'd had before. Otabek held up a hand before Yuri could ask any of the questions that bubbled up, and said, a lot more calmly than Yuri could've managed, "There are more kinds of binding than blood."

A long drawn-out sigh, and the air seemed to warm up a bit - or perhaps Yuri had finally gotten used to the cold. "Three questions asked and answered, then!"

"Agreed," Otabek said, then looked over at Yuri, eyebrows raised, and gestured with one hand. 

Wait. Now he could ask? But only three questions. Dammit. Yuri swallowed, hard, and tried to think of what, exactly, he wanted to ask. First things first. "Is my foster brother Yuri in the Fae lands local to this city?"

"Yes," the voice said promptly. "One down!"

Deep breath. "Is he - is he well?"

A pause, this time, before the voice said, "He has come to no harm in our lands or by our deeds." It sounded gentle, sorta, not as mocking and sing-song as before, and Otabek almost smiled, listening.

Yuri's turn to hesitate, long enough that Otabek noticed. "What's wrong? - I ask Yuri, not you, Leo."

"Aww," the voice said, back to laughter, while Yuri flushed red.

"It's - no, it's stupid. Just having two more questions I want to ask, and only one more opening."

"You can _ask_ ," the voice pointed out. "Even without a certain answer."

Yuri didn't need Otabek's slight shake of his head to know better than to trust that suggestion. He had to pick the more urgent question. "How can I bring my foster-brother Yuri back here?"

The voice hummed to itself for a moment. At last it said, "Just beyond the western gate of this city stands a house. In the garden of that house, you will find a white cat with blue eyes. Ask the cat to lead you to the one who will open the door. The cat may ask you for something, and you must give it, but in return the cat will lead you to the last magician. I cannot say what _he_ will ask, or how he will help, only that he is the only answer to your question."

Yuri sat back, and made himself take a breath again. That didn't sound _great_ , but it had to be better than chasing from one magician to the next, just _hoping_. "I understand," he said out loud.

Otabek opened his mouth to say something, maybe to dismiss the wind and voice, but before he could, the voice asked, "What was your final question?"

Yuri looked at Otabek, who shrugged. "Nothing, just - I wanted to make sure that my foster-brother _wanted_ to come back."

A second of silence, then a peal of laughter. "Oh, little Yuri! Your brother has danced with our king, and lies in his bed at night. What do you think the answer is?" And without waiting for a word or gesture from Otabek, the cold breeze swirled away and the pool of bloodied ink tipped over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't actually hate JJ. He just sets himself up so beautifully. He'll get better, I promise.


	5. Which Way Do You Want To Go?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which important bits of backstory are only partially shared, and Yuri thinks he knows what choice he's making.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Um. Not dead! Not abandoned! Still going!

Yuri woke up more quickly this time, blinking from sleep to clear awareness without any drowsy lingering in between, or any confusion about where he was. He stretched against the gentle weight of sheets and blankets against his naked skin - and as if they'd been waiting for him to wake up and pay attention, a series of embarrassingly vivid memories popped into his head of why, exactly, he was naked, and what, exactly, he'd done. With Viktor. The King of the Fae. He'd - and Viktor had - and then -

He sat up, looking around. No Viktor. No Phichit, either. No one in the room but Yuri himself. The room itself seemed barely different from the last time he woke up on this bed: still the marble and brocade, still the tall windows with the sunlit garden beyond - sunlight that didn't seem to have changed its angle at all, leaving Yuri with no way to guess if he'd napped for only a few minutes, or through to the next day.

Yuri's clothing still lay where they left it, a splash of blue and white against the slate gray of the couch. The necklace that allowed him to understand different languages, and who knew what else, dangled from a bed-post. On the floor between the couch and the bed lay a rumpled lump of bright reddish-purple fabric, which Yuri thought he remembered was Viktor's tunic. He didn't remember how it got to the floor - that particular image, apparently, _hadn't_ been important enough to etch itself into his memory. 

He should...get up. Bathe. Dress. But he didn't know what came after that. 

As if in answer, he heard Viktor's voice, distant and unclear. Yuri turned his head and closed his eyes, trying to listen harder. Still unclear, but now Yuri could hear more voices, too quiet to identify. 

Yuri sighed, and slipped out of bed. If Viktor was speaking with other servants, then he'd be back soon enough. If Viktor was speaking with other fae...well, then he didn't need Yuuri there, hovering like a needy child.

Without Phichit there to tell him what to do and how quickly to do it, Yuri lingered in his bath until his fingers began to crinkle up. Then he scrubbed himself clean (although the painted marks on his wrists and ankles remained as fresh and clear as before), and climbed out again. Towels waited in a neat pile, and next to them a loose robe, hanging from a hook on the wall, without even a tie to hold it closed.

Yuri dried himself, then pulled on the robe and headed back into the bedroom. The other door stood open, and he heard Viktor's voice, clear and close. "-or exaggeration," he was saying. "Yuri _could_ do it."

"Could do what?" Yuri called back.

In the silence that followed, Yuri wrapped the robe more closely around himself and went to the door. It lead into some kind of sitting room, or at least a room with comfortable-looking chairs and small tables and more tall windows looking out into the garden. Viktor, fully dressed in red and purple, stood by the door, as if he'd been the one who opened it. Phichit sat at one of the tables, frowning absently toward the door. Chris sat next to him, lounging in his chair, his fingers interlaced and resting over his mouth as if to keep anything from slipping out. He'd changed clothing, too, to something red and black.

"Could do what?" Yuri repeated, feeling himself flush. He'd forgotten the necklace in the other room. Could they even understand him?

Viktor took his hand and guided him to another seat at Phichit's table. "Could be of great help in dealing with someone who thinks the Dances are his moment of opportunity."

"Great help?" Phichit repeated blankly. He blinked, his eyes re-focused on Yuri, then he shook his head. "I'm sorry, your majesty, but I don't understand."

Chris laughed, low and throaty. "Of course not. You don't know how powerful our Yuri is."

Yuri flushed, and opened his mouth to protest - whatever Viktor had told him had surely been an exaggeration. But before he could speak, Viktor said, "Ah-ha! I had wondered, when you asked no questions after I returned."

"I _am_ your majesty's heir," Chris said, as if that explained anything.

"Now I'm even more confused," Phichit protested.

"They're talking about how I met Viktor," Yuri said. He hesitated and looked up at Viktor. "I think. Although that doesn't explain why you think I'm _powerful_ , when I failed --"

"No," Viktor said, soft but firm, and Chris echoed, "No."

Phichit looked from Viktor, to Yuri, to Chris. Then he shifted in his chair, curling up like an indulged child, and laced his hands over his knees. "Well, then. Story time?"

A moment of silence. Yuri felt his face heat even more, which he hadn't thought was possible. Viktor and Chris exchanged a long, thoughtful look, then both looked at Yuri. Were they - did they expect _him_ to explain?

"On my travels this summer," Viktor said, so abruptly that Yuri jumped, "I found myself in the lands of a far-off king. The king himself greeted me with all proper respect. His young cousin, who thought himself the king's heir, either did not recognize me or did not care. As soon as I left the main hall, the boy pulled me back out into the yard."

"You have come on a festival night," Chris murmured, as if he were quoting. "You must come out and celebrate with us."

Viktor grimaced, and gestured to Chris, open-handed, as if to say _exactly_. "He challenged me, as if I were only a wandering ice-shaper. The path between our world and the human world was easy, that night of the year, and once the fae would celebrate the festival by raiding the nearest human settlement for whatever and _who_ ever we pleased." 

"But?" Phichit said, raising his eyebrows. "I hear a 'but' coming, your majesty."

"But humans aren't blind," Yuri blurted, the words coming out more easily than he'd expected. He couldn't look at Viktor. "When raids always come from the same direction, the same _place_ , we can find it and block it."

"With what? Rocks?"

"A temple," Chris corrected, with a wince. "And trained men and women to guard it."

Phichit tilted his head. "So your Yuri was a...fighter? No, a dancer, of course."

"A _temple dancer_ ," Chris said, in an impressed tone of voice that Yuri had heard from other people in the village, but never expected to hear from anyone outside it - as if temple dancing took more than just loving dance and being stubborn.

" _The_ temple dancer," Viktor added proudly. "No one had gotten past him in years."

Protests rose up in Yuri's throat - Viktor made him sound like some kind of all-conquering beauty, and he wasn't _special_ , just _lucky_ that he'd always been able to distract the fae trying to sneak past him - but the words clogged in his throat as Phichit clapped his hands, as if he agreed with Chris and Viktor. "Now I wish I'd gotten to dance with you properly! So his majesty was enthralled too?"

"Yes," Chris said, at the same time Yuri said, "No."

"...which was it?"

"The challenge was to pass the temple dancer and reach the village," Viktor said, half to Phichit, half to Yuri. "And I failed."

"But you didn't…" Yuri had always known what to expect, what he was supposed to aim for. A good temple dancer caught the eyes of the fae as they approached, and held them, frozen in place, for as long as the dance continued. He looked over at Viktor at last. "You came up to me. You danced _with_ me."

Didn't Viktor understand? Every time Yuri danced before, he danced knowing that this time he might fail. Every time the voice of fear whispered into his mind that _this_ time, a fey would escape; that _this_ time, he wouldn't be good enough. Every time - no, not _every_ time, but often enough - one of the fae _wouldn't_ be caught immediately, but would step into his dance and try to redirect it.

Every time - until Viktor - Yuri danced back, and eventually their eyes glazed over and they froze, or dissolved into mist, or turned and ran. 

Viktor - Viktor had stepped forward, a splash of vivid color against the silvery-gray fog that always lingered there. Viktor stood, watching him for a moment, then stepped into Yuri's dance as if he always knew the steps, and knew how to fit himself in as perfectly as two half of a broken pot, rejoined with gold.

Phichit cleared his throat. Yuri jumped, and Viktor looked away, as Phichit said apologetically, "So his majesty danced with you, and then...went home?"

"Danced with him and distracted him," Chris said. "Not very much, according to my information. Just enough to allow one of the other fae to reach the door to the next room."

"Although they were beguiled enough that they walked into the door guard," Viktor said, and Yuri could hear the smile on his face. "They couldn't look away from my Yuri."

"Which started a free-for-all between the fae and the guards," Yuri said to the table. "They had to call down the High Priest!" And Minako had told his parents. Of course they'd seized the chance to send him away as soon as possible. Now that he thought of it, he was surprised they hadn't found an excuse sooner.

"She banished all of us," Viktor said, and sighed wistfully. "A sadly abrupt ending."

"Which explains why you didn't just bring him back immediately," Chris said. "My sources pretended they'd lost the fight to the guards. At least you had time to mark him."

"...mark me?" Yuri looked up again. He'd already known Viktor had powerful magic, to be able to walk forward and join in Yuri's dance like that. What else had he _done_? Was that the reason -

"It's like the signs I painted in your wrists and ankles," Phichit explained. "Only less visible, and not as strong. It's not _anchoring_ you, it just makes it easier for us to see you. ...and you to see us," he added after a moment.

"Oh. So that's why…" Why he'd been able to hear the music so clearly through the night, why he'd been able to follow it. 

"Hmm?"

"Never mind." Yuri sat up straighter. He'd already let go of his training - what was a little more? "Who do you want me to distract?"

A moment's pause. The bird outside kept singing. Then Viktor said, "All of them."

"Except you?"

Chris laughed, and said, " _Especially_ him." 

*

Invisible hands chose Yuri's clothing: something close-wrapped, dark as twilight, studded with glittering stars. Phichit helped him dress, then hesitated, dangling the necklace in his hands. "It doesn't go with your outfit," he muttered. "His highness said _always_ , but maybe…"

"What does it _do_?" Yuri asked, remembering walking into the room and understanding them all, without the intercession of the necklace.

"It helps…" Phichit hesitated, then said in a rush, "It's seven layers of illusion. It hides that you're human."

"What about my wrists and ankles?"

"Those keep you in solid contact with our world," Phichit said. "They work _with_ this -" He gestured with the locket. "- but don't require it."

"Then leave it here," Yuri said. He found a smile from somewhere. His head felt like it was floating off his body. "I'll win on my own, human blood and all."

Phichit looked at him, head tilted to one side like a curious bird. "I'll come get you when it's time," he said after a moment, and left Yuri alone, taking the necklace with him.

Yuri sat there and stared into nothing for what felt like a long time. He felt as if he stood at the edge of a high cliff. He hadn't told them how he did what he did: Chris had only second-hand information, Viktor magic-clouded memories. If Yuri went to the Autumn Dance tonight, if he _showed_ all his skill, all his power...he could never go back again. He could never look his family in the eye. His mother with her kind smile, his father with his warm laugh, Mari who knew him better than he knew himself, Minako who taught him everything Yuri knew of temple magic...little Yuri, who snarled at him like a protective cat, who he'd failed so badly…

On the other hand, Viktor. Viktor who was handsome, yes, and charming, and powerful, but also Viktor who listened to him, Viktor who offered him the favorite's rooms without demanding anything, Viktor whose touch made Yuri's head swim. Viktor who boasted of Yuri's skill as if it were his own.

Yuri closed his eyes,and stepped off the cliff.

*

He remembers the dance in pieces, as if someone cut up the ribbon of his memory and then pinned it back together badly. The first person Yuri dances with is Phichit: he remembers that clearly. It's a very formal dance, and Yuri chooses not to think about how he knows the steps. Mostly it's an exercise in frustration, saved only by the twinkle in Phichit's eye as he pretends to be as formal and stuffy as the dance. When the music ends, they both bow to each other, and Phichit raises his eyebrows. Yuri knows what he means, even though they've only known each other for a day. He could stay here and dance with Phichit again, not bother looking for a stranger. It would be safe, simple.

Instead he turns away.

He chooses his next partner to contrast with Phichit, a woman with skin as pale as rice and hair the unnaturally bright red only seen in the fey. She laughs, and Yuri thinks she tries to talk to him. He doesn't remember if he says anything in return. 

When the music pauses, Viktor's there, smiling and offering his hand. Yuri smiles back without thinking, and takes it.

He turns away, at the end of that dance, and doesn't look back. It's a tease, the beginnings of enthrallment. He can't be obvious, not yet. Let the watching fey wonder.

There's a woman in blue and yellow, who smiles with teeth a little too long and the faint prick of claws against Yuri's hand. There's a man glittering in gold, who hums to himself in counterpoint to the music, and calls after Yuri, as Yuri turns to leave, "Your brother is looking for you!" Yuri does not look back. There's more - surely there's more. But Yuri doesn't remember.

Viktor steps out of the crowd and smiles down at Yuri. Even he doesn't look quite human any more. Perhaps it's the night growing later. Perhaps it's Yuri, dancing and turning away, dancing as if he has power over the Fae instead of the reverse. Yuri does not let himself dwell on the thought, or on what the man called after him. He dances with Viktor, and accepts Viktor's kiss as rightful tribute. When this dance ends, Yuri still turns and walks away.

More dancing, moving from partner to partner, never hesitating, never looking back. (He can't look back or the whispers in his mind will catch up to him.) There's another woman, long-haired and dark-eyed and human in everything but how she moves. At first she hardly seems to be paying attention to Yuri: she's watching over his shoulder, or glancing out at the crowd, as if waiting for someone to appear. Yuri keeps them moving, gliding along the floor. He's becoming aware of the eyes on them - on _him_ \- and he must keep their attention. One dark-haired man in particular lurks nearby, glowering at Yuri, but neither Yuri nor his partner pay the man any attention. When the music ends and he bows to her, the woman waves him off with a wistful smile.

Chris takes Yuri's hand as if he was waiting for this opening. Maybe he was. This time, Yuri steps into dancing with him without hesitation or holding back. He matches Chris step for step, heavy-eyed look for heavy-eyed look, limb against limb in blatant seduction. And at the end of the dance, Yuri turns away like he has all the rest. 

He hears Chris's rueful chuckle, but doesn't let himself think about it, because Viktor is here.

This dance is not blatant seduction. It doesn't need to be, not between them. He already has Viktor ensnared. Viktor's fingers brush across Yuri's lips in promise for the kiss he steals as soon as the steps bring them close enough. His hands touch Yuri's body with casual familiarity, as if they have been lovers for years instead of a day, as if they were alone instead of in front of a vast assembly of fey. Yuri allows each kiss, each touch, stepping into them with a soft smile for Viktor alone. He imprints them into his memory. But he also remembers the plan. When the dance ends, Yuri leaves without hesitating.

More partners, more dancing. They blur together and vanish from Yuri's memory. One that sticks, unexpectedly clear, is of a pillar of flame, who chats about cooking as if they were sipping tea in a kitchen and not at the Autumn Dances. Perhaps it's only the timing, because Yuri turns from her to find the dark-haired man from earlier waiting for him, glower turned into a triumphant smile. 

Yuri does not take his hand: a whisper of sound, a taste in the air, tells him that a trap lies there. Instead, he paces around the man in time to the music, slow and slinking. He cannot confirm it, but he thinks this is the would-be challenger, who intends to prove himself stronger by seizing the king's new favorite. 

He's wrong. With each step, Yuri proves _he_ is stronger still. This is not the seduction he danced with Chris, nor the love-play he danced with Viktor. This is temple dancing, cold-hearted and cool-eyed, pretending to offer things that their prey will never have.

Half-way through the dance, the challenger belatedly realizes who is the hunted and who is the true hunter. He tries to look away, and fails; tries to step out of the dance, and staggers blindly back into Yuri's arms. Compared to Viktor, he's no challenge at all. The music flourishes and Yuri turns away with a little shrug, leaving the man frozen in place like a statue. 

(Yuri remembers one other thing: as he turns away from the challenger, he sees two of his previous partners - the red-head, and the women who watched the crowd as if she expected a knife to come from it - off to one side. The red-head has her mouth covered and her eyes crinkled up, as if she's stifling laughter. Her companion is hiding her face against the red-head's shoulder, and her shoulders are shaking. He doesn't stop to ask.)

Yuri doesn't wait for the next dance. Instead, he goes to find Viktor again immediately. 

Viktor is waiting. He sweeps Yuri into his arms, and they dance again, trading the lead back and forth. The music rises to a triumphant crescendo, and Viktor picks Yuri up, and leaves the dance hall with long strides. Yuri twines his arms around Viktor's shoulders, and smiles up at him. They've won.

He is still free-falling.

*

Viktor carried him down hallways Yuri didn't recognize, into a room somehow even grander than the rooms Yuri had spent the past days - Viktor's own rooms, Yuri assumed. Viktor laid Yuri down on a ridiculously vast bed, and stepped back.

Yuri knew what to expect now. He reached up to loosen his clothing.

Viktor's breath caught, audibly, and he said, "Let me."

Yuri obediently lowered his hands, as Viktor sat on the bed next to him and untied the high collar, then down the shirt fastenings. Viktor lingered over each button, his fingers warm against Yuri's skin, as if he didn't notice how Yuri had sweated through his shirt in the dancing, or how lying still chilled him so he must feel cold and clammy under Viktor's touch.

"You're so beautiful," Viktor whispered.

This startled a laugh from Yuri. Viktor paused in his unbuttoning, frowning down at him with his head tilted. "I'm sorry!" Yuri said. "It's just, coming from _you_..."

"Am I not beautiful, my love?"

"Of course you are," Yuri said, and pretended his face hadn't heated at being called _my love_.

Viktor hummed - in agreement or disagreement, Yuri couldn't tell which - then leaned over and kissed him.

It wasn't their first kiss. It wasn't even their first kiss _tonight_. But Viktor kissed as gently as if Yuri were a frightened virgin who needed to be soothed into his first time. Yuri found his pride illogically stung. He reached up and wound his arms around Viktor's neck, kissing him back as demanding as he knew how.

To his frustration, Viktor pulled back. "My love...what do you want?"

"You," Yuri said. Hadn't he made it obvious enough?

Instead of kissing Yuri again, Viktor sat all the way up, eyes narrowed as if annoyed or thinking. But he didn't ask again. Instead, after a moment, he finished undoing Yuri's top, and pulled it off him, with Yuri's willing cooperation. As soon as Yuri's shirt lay on the floor, Viktor stripped off his own as well, tossing it aside without even looking where it landed.

Yuri held his breath, expecting Viktor to lie back down with him. Instead, Viktor slipped off the bed entirely, and knelt down next to it. It took Yuri a moment to realize he was taking Yuri's shoes off for him.

Yuri propped himself up on his elbows, and watched, unable to breathe. The faint, persistent light of the room caught in the silver of Viktor's hair like a crown. A king, kneeling to _him_ , Yuri. The acting, the dances out in front of everyone, it hadn't been a lie, not for tonight. For tonight, maybe Viktor had given in to him as much as he gave in to Viktor. Maybe he really did have Viktor in his thrall.

Viktor set aside Yuri's shoes, and looked up as if he'd known Yuri was watching. "What do you want?" he repeated, sliding his hands up Yuri's legs.

Yuri opened his mouth, then shut it again. He couldn't just _choose_ , not with Viktor's hands so close to his cock. "You," he repeated helplessly.

Viktor's mouth quirked into an almost-smile. He stripped the last of Yuri's clothing from him, quick and efficient, then explored Yuri's body with his hands as if he hadn't just had him a little while ago. He avoided Yuri's cock, but lingered over the spot right above Yuri's hip when Yuri burst into helpless giggles at the brush of Viktor's fingers. He traced lines along Yuri's pectoral muscles until Yuri squirmed, then down along the length of Yuri's arms, lavishing kisses across Yuri's hands. Then up to nibble along Yuri's neck, and drew who knows what with his tongue under Yuri's ear. "What do you want," he breathed into Yuri's ear.

"Do I have to say it?" Couldn't Viktor decide?

"Yes. I am yours, my love - but if I am under your command, you must _tell_ me that command."

_You,_ Yuri wanted to say again, rebelliously. But Viktor had told _him_ to choose, which meant he couldn't just lie back and passively allow Viktor to touch him. He wanted - he wanted so much, and only part of it involved sex. He wanted Viktor silencing the demon whispers in his head with a smile and a kiss; Viktor, touching him with those long agile fingers; Viktor, bathing Yuri in sweet spicy oils (and licking them off Yuri's skin afterwards); Viktor, talking about Yuri as if he had as much strength and power and ability as Viktor. He wanted Viktor to be his, and he wanted to be Viktor's. 

The words clogged somewhere between his mind and his tongue. Instead, he said very softly, "Fuck me." 

He expected Viktor to pounce. But he wasn't very surprised when Viktor instead kisses him with that frustrating gentleness. Yuri leaned into the kiss, trying to find the passion that blanked his mind, but Viktor pulled back again. "Softly." 

"I'm a _virgin_ , not a fool," Yuri said. 

Viktor's eyes widened - had he not known that? He kissed Yuri again, harder, and for a second his hands tightened on Yuri's arm and hip. But only a second. 

Then he started _over_ again, as if he thought Yuri wasn't aroused enough, as if he couldn't feel Yuri shaking against him and see Yuri's cock right in front of him, hard and leaking. Yuri tried to move up against Viktor's body, but Viktor pressed him back down to the bed with his hands. Yuri reached out, and Viktor took his wrists, kissed them over the bare skin, and pressed them to the bed too. 

"Viktor, please!" 

"Are you sure, my Yuri?" 

He made this choice, already, dammit - he'd given in, didn't Viktor realize? What came out of Yuri's mouth was a strangled, "I'm sure. Fuck me!" 

Another shuddering breath. Viktor snapped his fingers, and pressed them, slick with sudden magic, between Yuri's legs. Yuri tried to relax, to accept this. He'd already fallen, and this was _Viktor_. 

Slowly Yuri relaxed into the growing pressure of Viktor's fingers. Finally Viktor withdrew his hand and knelt up between Yuri's legs, reaching down to guide himself into position. "Once more," he said hoarsely. "Ask me once more." 

"Fuck me," Yuri said, past caring, and Viktor pushed in. 

Yuri expected pain, or at least awkwardness, despite all the teasing and preparation. Instead, it felt like giving way, like one last fall. He let Viktor guide him in how to move, let himself cry out and felt Viktor moan against his neck, every movement finally silencing the dark whispers in Yuri's mind and letting him feel. 

He screamed when he came, incoherency or Viktor's name, he couldn't be sure. Viktor came silently, holding him tight, and refused to pull back for what feels like a long time. Yuri didn't mind Viktor's weight on him. This was what he wanted: Viktor, around him, in him, stroking his hair. 

At last, Viktor pulled out and sat back on his heels He looked at Yuri for a long time, long enough that Yuri shifted self-consciously. Without Viktor warm against him, he felt awkwardly sticky, and wanted a bath. 

Finally Viktor said, "Yuri…" 

"Mmm?" He hoped Viktor meant to suggest a bath. Or perhaps sex again, though he wasn't sure if he could say yes - Yuri ached, not just in the expected places but in his thighs and hands. Perhaps, even better, he'd tell Yuri what to expect tomorrow. A little part of him hoped against hope that he would call Yuri his love again. 

Instead, Viktor said, "Will you remember me when you leave?" 

It took a moment to understand what Viktor just said. Then Yuri sat up, so abruptly he nearly hit Viktor's head with his. "WHAT." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Easter eggs: besides the title (why yes, LABYRINTH /is/ one of my favorite movies), none of the described people that Yuri dances with are original with me. Points to anyone who recognizes the two non-YOI partners. Also, apparently Michele is hung up on his sister in any universe.

**Author's Note:**

> I am not a fast writer, so I'll do my best. Hope you enjoy in the meantime!


End file.
